


We Could Sink Together

by th_esaurus



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7300627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Healy rubs the back of his neck, sweating from the midday sun, wipes his palm on his jeans. He's getting soft in his old age, he guesses. A hard man who doesn't know how to defend himself from scared young girls.</p><p>Or, he supposes, idiot thirty-something single fathers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Could Sink Together

**Author's Note:**

> I took some liberties with canon by mixing in a few bits from the novel. Welp.

Healy moves in the same afternoon Holland March totals his car.

It's not a pre-planned arrangement.

*

_Two weeks in and Healy finds March up to his collarbone in the bathtub, water long cold. He's wearing the white suit with the sleeve slit up to the elbow, despite the fact that his cast is long gone, and there is a bottle of whis key bobbing between his knees._

_Judging by the sickly amber of the bath water, he didn't quite manage to finish it._

_His dredged suit makes him heavy, and March has an inch or two on him, but Healy is stocky and strong and hefts him out of the tub with a wet slap, water slopping all over the floor._

_Stands him up. March vaguely patting his pockets down for a damp cigarette. "Stop that," Healy chides. He gets the jacket off easily enough, Holland dopey and malleable; drains the bath and lays it dripping over the side of the tub. The tie comes next, and then the shirt, March starting up an incoherent stream of protest._

_"Duck your head," Healy says. March does, muttering to himself._

_Healy carefully lifts the thin chain from around his neck, the wedding band on the end of it nudging against March's chin and forehead on the way up._

_His hand shoots up to grab it. "Easy," Healy says. "You ought to take better care of it." Makes sure March is watching as he curls the chain up neatly on top of the dresser. So he'll know where it is for later._

_He leaves March to deal with his belt and trousers, and hunts for a dry towel. He can only find a ratty thing in Holly's room, a Minnie Mouse beach towel with the reds all sun-bleached to dirty pink. When was the last time March drove her out to the beach? Hell, when was the last time he was sober enough to drive her anywhere?_

_March looks deflated, naked and damp like this. It's not that Healy pities him; more that his veneer has been scuffed. A bruise on his left knee from clumsiness, a few nicks and scratches from the Amelia venture, the ugly scars on his wrist from his own damn idiocy. His arm is pale and patchy all over from being bound up so long. Drips of cold water are sliding down from his messy hair and overlong moustache._

_Healy throws the towel in his face, and gets a muffled response that he likes to think is gratitude rather than a cuss._

_March doesn't fumble to cover himself. Just petulantly towels himself dry all over while Healy wrings out his clothes into the bath._

_So this is how it's gonna be._

*

March has wrapped the hood of the car quite neatly around a palm trunk, three blocks away from his rental. Jumped up the lip of the curb and thunked straight against the bark. The crumpled chassis is smoking, as is March, though it's barely visible through the glint of the arid sun off the brand new peaks and angles on the hood of the car.

Two lanky teens are perched on the back of the convertible, squinting at the road, as Healy drives past.

He stops. Backs up slowly. Clambers out of his car.

"You Holly?" One of them yells.

"Do I look like I'm Holly?" He yells back.

"Dude kept asking for Holly or Helen or something," one of the teens says. The other chews gum, and offers nothing.

"I'm _or something_ ," Healy mutters. "Get off the fucking car. Scram."

"Just tryin'a help, dude."

Likely they went through March's glovebox while he was half out of it. Maybe found one of his gaudy P.I. flyers and thought better of it. Maybe slowly recognised Healy's face from it.

At the very least, they get the fucking message.

*

_It's a month and change before they talk shop about their wives._

_June had left him exactly three years ago to the day. Healy remembers signing the divorce papers in a dull, wooden office, overseen by a dull, wooden man. She had served him, in the end, that newfangled no-fault deal; even though he'd offered to try and make it work. She was not his first wife; before her there'd been Sandy, a spitfire Brooklyn girl, childhood sweetheart he'd cheated on with whiskey and jail time; and then Mary-Lou, who thought she wanted a bad guy with a heart of gold, and didn't quite find either in Jackson Healy._

_He tells Holland all this, between shallow swigs from a bottle of dark rum. They're sitting in creaky deckchairs by the side of the empty pool, and Holland is well on his way to drunk, too, shakily smoking his third cigarette. Healy had allowed himself a celebratory Havana, which he puffed on steadily, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. He supposed he was both barely intelligible, and reeked of woodsmoke and tobacco, but Holland was neither actively listening nor could he smell. So._

_In this foggy darkness, with the lights off in the house behind them, the pool almost looks full. Calm, like a pebble could ripple the surface. Quaint illusions._

_Healy doesn't mention that there had also been a brief stint during his time on the avocado ranch, in his twenties, between wives number one and two, where he was exchanging nightly favours with a Puerto Rican by the name of Sebastian. The turnover on the farm was high enough that within two months, Sebastian vanished without so much as a goodbye, thanks for all the handjobs._

_Healy takes a deep puff of his cigar. There's a low-grade danger in reminiscing over a drink, he thinks darkly._

_He waits to see if March wants to venture his own tales. Perhaps the wound is still too raw. His hand, hovering by his half-smoked cigarette, has been trembling consistently all night._

_"It's all right," Healy murmurs. "Don't need to tell me about her."_

_"Holly takes after her," March says in a rush, skipping over consonants. He dropped his cigarette into his lap, and flicked it viciously into the pool with a faint hiss. "They're both better than me."_

_Then, for once, he stops. His lips move open and closed a few times, as though he can't quite believe himself that he has no more words. He fishes his cigarette carton out of his pocket, finds it empty, swears three times, and throws the box in a wobbly arc into the pool with its brethren._

_Healy thinks about finding the screw top for his rum bottle; downs the rest instead. March's silence makes him uneasy, and he reaches over, pats the back of March's palm; they'd talk another time._

_"Good job I don't have to drive," he mutters, getting up out of his deck chair to stumble back up the porch. The guest room – he's been there a month but they call it the guest room – is all the way across the other side of the house, and he has to steel himself for the drunken trudge; a walk of shame he's managed to avoid in front of March until now. June never used to catch his arm when he stumbled, said he brought it on himself. Always that air of tired disgust._

_But suddenly, suddenly, March shoots out his hand, grabs Healy's wrist, over the top of his watch. A tight grip but nothing Healy couldn't break out of if he wanted to._

_March's mouth flaps like a fish for a second more. His palm slips down, inch by inch, until, just for a moment, he's clasping Healy's hand. "You—" he manages. That high tone that gives away his fear._

_"You too," March manages. "You're—better—"_

_Pulls his hand away like it's searing._

_"Drink some water," Healy says, surprising himself with how gentle it comes out. "Get some sleep."_

*

He clambers into the car as though they're about to go for a top-down drive through the hills. As though the car could move an inch under its own power. Healy realizes the cigarette between March's pursed lips isn't even lit.

"Where's your lighter?" he sighs.

"Pocket," is all he gets from March. So he hunts around, leaning over and patting down his jacket and pants, until he finds March's cheap lighter by his left hip. It's a good cover to feel him over for bumps and bruises. Seems shell-shocked, but nothing physical.

"C'mere," Healy grunts, pulling March's shoulder down so that he leans; lights his cigarette for him, pushes him back upright. "Where's Holly?"

"At school," March says, miserably. The smoke in his lungs seems to loosen him up, and he starts talking, and doesn't stop. "I only had a few, Christ, it's a nice fucking day and I wanted a cold beer or two—"

"How many?"

March hiccups, stumbling. "Seven. And two—four shots."

"Did you eat?"

"What?"

Healy sighs.

"They should stop building so many fucking trees," March carries on, ash spitting from the end of his cigarette as he talks. "They just pop up out of goddamn nowhere, every fucking corner, build less trees and make the roads wider and then we wouldn't have problems like this."

"Plant," Healy mutters, knowing it's futile. "They plant trees."

"Well they _shouldn't_ ," March finishes. His hand is trembling something awful as he lifts it to his mouth, letting out a loud huff of smoke. His hair is mussed from the crash, his tie knot too high up on his neck, and his five o'clock shadow is well in place even though it's midday. He always looks a wreck.

He looks like Healy did twenty years back when he was couch-surfing between prisons.

"You got insurance on this thing?" he asks, patting the dash of the sorry car like an old horse.

"Oh Jesus," March whines, his head dropping to his knees. "The same scalpers as the house. They're gonna kill me."

"Not if you kill yourself first," Healy says, hoisting March up and straightening him out. "C'mon. You can't park here all day. Can you stand? Walk?" March nods, dejected. "So fucking walk."

Weakly, as a lop-sided team, they nudge the hood free of the palm. The dented bumper tries its damnedest to stick to the trunk, and Healy has to kick it free. March, now he's on his feet, is shaking all over, a faint tremble that comes and goes in twinges.

He's a hard one to parse. It's not that Healy pities him as such. He just seems so wholly lacking in the ability to take care of himself. Maybe his wife did, before, and now he's letting his daughter drink from that poisoned chalice. It's a load she shouldn't have to burden, at least not alone.

Healy rubs the back of his neck, sweating from the midday sun, wipes his palm on his jeans. He's getting soft in his old age, he guesses. A hard man who doesn't know how to defend himself from scared young girls.

Or, he supposes, idiot thirty-something single fathers.

*

_They've still got a job to do. No such thing as settling down. The world always finds a way to fuck them over anew._

_Four months later, he presses a loaded derringer into Holly's sweating palm. "I can't, I can't kill someone, Mr. Healy, I just--"_

_He kisses her forehead, and thumbs away the smudge of blood his bottom lip leaves there. "It takes a lot of bullets to kill a man, sweetheart," he murmurs. "You take it."_

_"I won't fire it," she says, shaking._

_"That's enough. You just hold it out in front of you, pretend like you will. You can do that for me, Holly?"_

_She nods. She's a smart girl. It's a shame she's not been raised by better men._

_Neither of them know where her father is. Whether he's alive or not. Schrödinger's March._

_It'd be funny if it could be._

*

He manhandles March into the passenger seat of his beat up old Tornado, lets him smoke out the open window. March's ears are pink with embarrassment.

Healy knows that he's only ever spoken about his place in the abstract, and doesn't respond to March's confusion when they pull up in the parking lot of the Comedy Store. The bar's open, though patrons are piecemeal at this time of day, and Healy steers March through to the back by the crook of his arm. "I mean, while we're here—"

Healy shoves him a little faster.

He's got nothing smart-mouthed to say about Healy's apartment. It used to be a nice little hideaway, nothing of June's, just Jackson Healy: thrift-store wardrobes and his razor on the lip of the sink, nobody to tut about his stubble on the porcelain; his favourite sneakers next to the bed, and the freshwater wish that was, at least, something living to give a shit about.

The fish are dead now, and the tank going green with algae. He hasn’t cleared it out yet. March taps on the side of the tank anyway. Zip.

His partition was shot up to hell, so he smashed the rest of the glass out with a sledgehammer and boarded it up. Fucked up the decent natural light in the place. Half his bedframe and a patch of the floorboards are stained blue, so he knows his deposit's down the drain.

He hadn't planned to move out, but—

Circumstances change.

"How'd you swing this place?" March whistles.

"The owner's a buddy of mine. Did some work for him in the sixties when he was setting up shop."

"You mean like, beat people up?"

"Yeah."

"Right," March says, lamely. He looks sturdier now, but somehow coy. Nothing to do with his hands now his cigarette's finished, and they hang lankily at his side. His eyes keep darting around the sad mess as Healy grabs a few necessities – toothbrush, clean shirts, brass knuckles, his words of the day. Half the wad of cash he's got stashed in his bedside cabinet; his savings account.

"Was this all Amelia?" March says suddenly.

"You think a twenty-something scrap like her could do something like this?"

"Fuck you. You know what I mean."

Healy shrugs. "Yeah, they had a little fun with both of us, didn't they?"

Two houses ruined, and Amelia shot point blank in the chest. Case fucking closed.

"I'm sorry, man," March says quietly. It's too sombre for him: his garish shirt, his boyish face. Signet ring on his pinky, wedding ring around his neck.

There's an empty beat between them where Healy thinks, yeah, he could easily blame Holland March for all this shit. A lot of people seem to end up in a bad way, crossing March's path.

But then, so do people who bump into Jack Healy.

They're carved of the same stone.

"Nah," Healy sighs. "Just comes with the territory."

*

_Four months and two days – four months after Healy moved in, two days after he brings March home from the hospital with a graze on his elbow and a bad attitude – Healy wakes up with March's mouth on his hip._

_"Holy shit," he says. Then, "What—" Then, "March. March, Holland—"_

_He scrubs his eyes with the heel of his palm to force himself awake. "March, you're drunk. Stop, fuck, stop it."_

_March presses his forehead against the sensitive dip of Healy's pelvis, and they both groan. "I'm not, I swear to God."_

_"I can smell it on you."_

_"Shit," March sobs, muffled against Healy's skin. He's lifted the hem of Healy's sleep tee, though not touched his boxers. His chest is a warm pressure on Healy's dick. Healy's abruptly aware of the last time he had sex with anyone other than his right hand. It was thirteen months ago, with a woman whose lipstick smudged against her chin as she sucked him off. He had paid her thirty bucks._

_Very carefully, Healy puts his hand on March's mussed hair. It's comforting, but he can stop March fast if he tries anything. "What's this for?"_

_"I just—" March hiccups, a pleasant tickle against Healy's skin. His mouth is so damn close to Healy's dick. "You've been so good to me, a good pal, fuck, good for Holly—"_

_"She's been good for me," Healy says mildly, stroking March's hair just a little._

_"I know, I know, you're the best thing that's—fucking—fuck—I wanted to—"_

_"Is this—?"_

_"Let me—"_

_"March," Healy says sternly. His hand stills. "Is this—do you think you_ owe _me?"_

_March lets out a soft, long groan, his tense body deflating. He's blanketing Healy's whole lower half, and it's too hot for this, and neither of them are wearing much, and Healy can feel the prickle of sweat breaking out on the backs of his knees, but he waits. He waits._

_"I do owe you," March manages. "But I—want to—"_

_"Okay," Healy stops him with a small tug on his hair. "Then you'll still wanna when your bloodstream's not eighty percent whiskey. Come here."_

_"What—?"_

_"I said come up here. Don't make me say it three times."_

_March crawls up Healy's body and flops beside him on the bed. It's barely a double, all the furniture too small for grown men in this faux-Malibu rental, but Healy's cognisant enough not to point it out. March doesn't exactly curl himself around Healy, but doesn't exactly not either; his hands clenched so his knuckles are grazing Healy's thick bicep, his knees popped up so he's pinching Healy's thigh more than framing it. His breath is—unpleasant, and it really is too hot for this._

_Somehow, though. They manage to grab a few hours sleep._

_March is gone when Healy wakes up in the morning. The left hand pillow vaguely damp where he'd drooled into it. That's all._

_The things we want when we're sober, Healy thinks dryly, ain't always what we fancied the night before._

*

"Here's how this thing's gonna play out," Healy tells him. "Far as Holly ever knows, you got shunted by a shit driver on a badly-planned intersection. Don't say drunk-driver, she'll see through you.

"Now I'm gonna put my head down at your's for a couple of days. Make sure you haven't got some fucking concussion, make sure Holly doesn't have to drag your ass around town. We got some cases that need going over anyway, and I need you near and sober, okay?"

"Okay," March huffs, petulant, and still a little drunk.

They pull up on the empty driveway of March's rental. It's a bigger echo of Healy's sorry apartment, shot up and battered, flecks of plaster and glass still dusting the hedgerows under the boarded-up window. At least some boys had come by and taken the tree off of the roof.

They really were two ugly peas in a goddamn pod.

*

_Seventeen weeks in, and Holland March says to him, "I'm not drunk."_

_Healy sniffs the air, not particularly subtly. Cigarette smoke, yesterday's cologne, burnt cookie dough – Holly's doing. He knows the smell of booze, enough distance from the bars he fell in and out of to recognise it as a foreign stink rather than a perfume._

_"Okay," he says, truthful._

_"I'm not drunk," March says again, oddly determined, and this time, he kisses Healy. Tentative, as soft as his chapped lips and bristle can manage. Wet, though, and warm, and wanting._

_Healy puts a hand on the back of his neck. Just rests it there. No push or pull, just a weight._

_"…Okay," Healy says._

*

Healy moves in the same afternoon Holland March totals his car, with every intention of moving out again.


End file.
